Well, summer's coming to a close, but we finally went for our trial run with the trailer. We only went about 10 minutes from home to Brite Lake, but it was still great fun -- and it was a first for the pups. We got to relax and see what worked and didn't in the trailer. :) Need a new water pump, but electric worked fine!
At the corral this morning, there was this little guy in the next pen. He is 3 weeks old and was VERY cute!
His owner came to take his mama out for a ride and baby just followed behind!
Here we go...
What I learned today: riding the horse when you're trying to get it to go where you want it to go is VERY different than sitting on the horse and letting it follow the one in front of it on a trail ride. :)
Copper and I are trying to do circles around the cone - poor guy, I'm sure my "cues" were really confusing for him. It's amazing how much coordination you have to have to do the right things with the reins, "flapping your legs" to help direct the horse and focus on not falling off. 
I leaned SO much...and got to trot and lope.
Thank you, Melanie, for your patience with me!
Thank you, wonderful-husband-of-mine for such an awesome experience! 
My honey decided to treat me to a surprise! He's a great guy! This morning I got a fun horse riding lesson... :)
I got to get up close and personal with my horse, Copper.....brushing him, checking his hooves
This was a local place - my instructor was Melanie - and she was fabulous!
Here I am trying to get the saddle on the horse -- those things are heavy! Copper was very patient, though!
And let's not forget the bridle!
Ok...I think we're ready! Thankfully Derek didn't take any pics of me trying to "hoist" myself on the horse - that was a challenge! Stay tuned for more pics...
Dear Aubrey,
I love you!!!
A special treat was Mark bringing up his Guitar Hero - I had never played it before and much to Derek's delight, I think I'm hooked!
One of the things we are looking forward to with our new (to us) white truck - is camping with Derek's trailer - it's going to be 16' of traveling fun! Derek spent a lot of last week in Lake Elsinore where his folks have kindly been housing it for the last 6 or so years! My honey worked hard in the heat to get new tires for it, etc. so that we could bring it home to Tehachapi. We thought is was "providential" that it is called "Shasta"!
So this afternoon we decided to tackle the clearing out of the trailer. There have been many boxes in it for storage - so after a bug bombing, we got to wiping out the dirt, dust and cobwebs. 
Michelyn is especially proud of this drastic change - I didn't get a "before shot" picture but imagine everything covered with boxes, boxes, and more boxes. Throw in some old propane tanks and snow tires and everything from toilet paper to a love letter from one of Derek's old girlfriends and you get the idea!
Hey, the color combos may not be "hip" - but we'll work with the "retro" theme!
And this is just a random picture of 'my family' hanging out on a Sunday afternoon.
Thursday, Derek & I went on a 2 hour horseback ride - Derek riding 'Tuesday' and Michelyn riding 'Tommy' - I think this may be our "thing" - a fun activity when we go different places.
Here we're passing the "swiss chalet" - a little one-room cabin as a resting stop for cross-country skiers in the winter.
Afterwards, we had lunch in Truckee and visited nearby Donner Lake and the State Park/Emigrant Trail Museum. I got a book earlier in the week ("Desperate Passage") about the infamous Donner Party and it was great to see the actual locations of much of that story -- it was a very interesting book with lots of great info and history.
This is a statue acknowledging the survivors and general western pioneer spirit - the height of the rock column is supposed to be the presumed height of the snowdrifts when the Donner Party got snowed in while trying to cross the Sierra Nevada mountains.
